The Wall Street Journal: J.P. Morgan buying fintech startup WePay

J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. said that it agreed to buy payments company WePay Inc. in the bank’s first sizable acquisition of a financial-technology startup.

The banking giant plans to roll out WePay’s technology to J.P. Morgan’s

JPM, -0.22%

  4 million small-business customers, said Matt Kane, CEO of Chase Merchant Services. WePay, which has roughly 200 employees, helps online marketplaces and crowdfunding websites like GoFundMe process payments.

The two companies didn’t disclose terms of the deal. But a person familiar with the matter said the price was above the roughly $220 million valuation that Redwood City, Calif.-based WePay achieved in a 2015 fundraising.

The growing popularity of e-commerce and mobile shopping has fueled deal making in the payments sector of late. There have been 166 deals involving payments companies in 2017 for a total of at least $29.3 billion, the most in any segment of fintech, according to investment bank Financial Technology Partners LP.

An expanded version of this report appears on WSJ.com.

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